Building the Creative Community

The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited is an eighteen chapter book published in 2012 by Basic Books and written by Richard Florida, of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and New York University. The author presents a revised and expanded version of his classic work, which pioneered the idea that our society is in the midst of a fundamental economic and cultural shift led by an emerging class of people, defined by their occupations as the Creative Class. He argues that human creativity has become the pivotal force at the heart of current societal change. Supporting his theory with substantial research and grounding his arguments in classic historical and economic thinking, Florida sheds new light on successful Creative Age companies and cities. Chapter 15, Building the Creative Community (46 pages), addresses the author's proposal that the emergence of the Creative Economy has changed the old rules of economic development. The new emphasis, he says, is for a city to figure out how to attract and retain a variety of people, not corporations. People are the heart of the Creative Economy and any strategy for fostering creative growth will have to meet their varied and changing needs. Florida also argues that, although urban America has experienced a decline, the city is once again the center of development - but he also looks at suburban areas and what makes certain suburbs competitive in the creative world. He takes an in-depth look at the creative development of Austin, Dublin, Las Vegas, and Pittsburgh.

• Creativity
• Finance and investing
• Talent management
• Innovation
• Change management